


vertigo

by Snowsheba



Series: thanks, dad. love, hana [5]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, and get more hana backstory yaaay, can be read as a stand-alone, in which we explore the "who are you calling a child" voiceline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 20:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8767144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowsheba/pseuds/Snowsheba
Summary: nemothesurvivor asked: Do you think Hana had first hand experience with the Kaiju Omnic before joining MEKA? Like a competition was canceled/evacuated because of an impending attack?
  
    (takes place sometime in chapter 62 of thanks, dad. love, hana)





	

**Author's Note:**

> alternate summary: she's beauty, she's grace, she's nineteen and won't hesitate to shoot you in the face

“I was sixteen,” Hana tells him. She fiddles with the handle of her steaming mug of tea, still too hot to drink comfortably. “It was… December. The eighteenth, almost six in the morning. It was still dark outside when I heard the news.”

Across from her, Lúcio stares at her, intent and focused. His bright eyes gleam with something she can’t quite decipher, his hands cupped around his mug, and the mess hall is empty save for the two of them.

“I was going to go to get set up, meet the competition, that kind of thing,” she continues. “You always have to go super early. All the techs have to get everything situated, and you don’t want to arrive when most of the fans are there. Usually we go in through the back, even then, since people kept waiting at the door earlier and earlier to see us.”

“Seems legit,” Lúcio says, noncommittal. He’s not pushing her, but she feels his curiosity in the swarm of butterflies in her stomach.

“It was always stressful,” Hana replies with a short laugh. “In any case, I was about to leave to go to the hall, or at least I was about to get in the car, when my driver got a call and told me to go back inside. And I did, and then the holos turned on to the emergency channel, and then - there was a live feed of what was happening downtown.

“It was nothing like I had ever seen,” she says, eyes narrowing slightly as she sees the beast in her mind’s eye. “Huge. Skyscrapers tall and wide.”

“I’ve seen the footage,” Lúcio says.

“Then you’ve seen how clever it is. It waited for a day where there would be a lot of people concentrated in one area before it struck.” She’s quiet, and then she says softly, “It leveled the hall we were to play in, along with all of the surrounding area. It was lucky that I was so far away from the city, mostly to throw off any tails.”

Lúcio reaches over to hover a hand over hers, waiting until she nods before letting his palm settle across her fingers. It’s not exactly reassuring, but she lets the pressure and warmth ground her, keep her here, as she takes in a breath. “A lot of people blamed me for what happened,” she tells him. “Hundreds of thousands dead, omnics and humans alike. An entire city wiped off of the map even as the military intervened, as they always did.”

There’s an unspoken _but_. Lúcio squeezes her hand and says nothing as she forces herself to breathe in slow, even breaths, focusing on her lungs as they expanded and decompressed.

“That was when the omnic in the sea hacked the MEKA units,” she says. “That was - that was when things really went badly.”

“Is that when you…?”

“Yes,” she says, and then she bites her lip and says again, “Yes. That was when the military approached my family to ask me to help them. My father had moved further inland to avoid the omnic, and when I returned to him from the competition, he told me my options, how I would be drafted when I turned eighteen anyhow and how it might be best to join up early. At the time… well. At the time, it seemed there was little choice.”

“You were sixteen,” Lúcio says, gentle. If he’s shocked by any of this, he’s hiding it tremendously well. “That’s illegal.”

“It was a desperate time,” Hana answers, frank. “Busan had just been razed. Who knew what city would be next? If my skills could be used for the greater good, then I would gladly take the opportunity.” She lifts her eyes and studies Lúcio closely. “You would do the same.”

“I’m twenty-six,” he points out. “There’s a difference there, Hana.”

“I am not a child,” she shoots back, eyes narrowing.

“You are more of a soldier than most of us here,” Lúcio says. He’s not placating; he’s matter-of-fact, especially as he says, “The fact that that is true when you’re nineteen is fucked up. I know you hate it, but you can’t blame us for being a bit horrified.”

She has nothing to say to that, and he says, “What happened next?”

“You already know the answer to that,” she says. “I was drafted. Well, I joined up, officially.” She pauses. “Actually, not even officially; one day I was at home, the next I was in basic with about thirty, forty others, and no one knew why all the top gamers suddenly stopped streaming for a week or two. I was one of the youngest ones there.”

“You hadn’t ever seen the omnic firsthand yet, right?”

“That would not happen for a few more months, no,” Hana says. She laughs; it’s humorless. “They put us through basic, trained us in the MEKAs, sorted us into squads - and then that was it. We were sent to the field, and we fought, and we won, at least temporarily.”

“What was it like?”

Hana is so tired of this - tired of talking about her life, tired of rehashing every piss-poor decision she’s made, tired of therapy and healing and getting better - but she swallows back the bitterness and holds onto Lúcio’s hand like a lifeline. D.Va whispers at the edge of her mind, but she can do this if she focuses hard.

“Have you ever stared down from a high place and felt a bit of vertigo - not a fear of the height itself, but the sense of _what if_ , knowing that if you took a wrong step, you would die?” Lúcio nods, and Hana says, “It was like that, except it lasted forever, and some of the people next to you fell.”


End file.
